What happened to the 100,000-hour LED bulbs?

Early adopters of LED lighting will remember 50,000 hour or even 100,000 hour lifetime ratings printed on the box. But during a recent trip to the hardware store the longest advertised lifetime I found was 25,000 hours. Others claimed only 7,500 or 15,000 hours. And yes, these are brand-name bulbs from Cree and GE.

I put these questions to the test. Join me after the break for some background on the light bulb cartel from the days of incandescent bulbs (not a joke, a cartel controlled the life of your bulbs), and for the destruction of some modern LED bulbs to see why the lifetimes are clocking in a lot lower than the original wave of LED replacements.

Just a good, fun, but also depressing read.

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After my own calculation it made sense for most lights to use led in our house after almost 8 years. I only had to replace 1 a couple of weeks ago. Most are still adequate for the amount of light we need and I hope they last some extra years. After reading the article I must say it corresponds to my feeling that they give less lumen compared to new. Because of some heavy machinery in the farms nearby our power supply isn’t as stable as it should be, but the electronics in most leds seem to deal with that perfectly fine. I haven’t checked last time, but the first ones indeed stated 100.000 light hours or a high number of on/off cycles.

I have bought 10-15 LED bulbs past few years, brand name and noname, neither lasted more than 4-6 months, so maybe 1500-2000 hours, which is far far away from advertised 25000… Power supply in my place is pretty stable, so that shouldn’t be a problem. One died just yesterday when I tried to turn it on.

What people often “forget” it that incandescent bulbs are electronic “free”, hence their lifetime only depend on the filament quality (or lack thereof). Using CFL or LED, you have some driving electronic, hence that might fail before the luminophores. Anyway, don’t expect vendors to keep their promised, even the “lifetime warranty” can suddenly be voided if you read all the tiny lines.

You are doing something wrong. I moved around 4 years ago and kitted the house out with led’s (bar one odd dangly glass halogen thing that I have not replaced though will when the buld goes). over the first year. I have not yet had to repalce a single bulb.

You say brand but what? Everything with a neame is tachnically a brand, does not mean it is a good one.

I avoid ones too cheap and places I think might be selling dodgy knock offs (even if by accident). Most come from ASDA to be honest.

Now the halagen gu10’s that the led gu10’s replaced used to blow at around one a month.

Location, humidity, temperature will also infuence the life span. (and other things!)

Back around 11-ish years ago, when the first Phillips LED bulbs came out (they were heavy, with a bright yellow coating around the LEDs, divided into three sections at the top), we managed to do an “extreme coupon stacking” deal at London Drugs. Got over a dozen bulbs, well over $250 value, for just the taxes (so something like $15 CDN). These were originally around $45 CDN each, on sale for $25 CDN each.

The first bulb from that batch died after only a few years. Turns out they don’t like being in outdoor lights, especially in the -20C winters and +40C summers. Ooops.

The rest lasted around 8 years.

The final bulb died in in December, just over 11 years of use, which is just shy of 100,000 hours. 🙂

When single bulb prices dropped below $10 CDN, we picked up a bunch more. Those lasted between 3-5 years. Now, you can buy LED bulbs at the dollar store. Those have been lasting at least 1-3 years so far.

So, in our experience, bulb price has dropped significantly, power efficiency has increased, but lifetime has also dropped significantly.

Whoever took those claims seriously other than tech reporters? There were never any real-world tests done with these bulbs that showed a 22 year life span. Couldn’t have since they hadn’t been around for 22 years.

It definitely depends a lot on the quality of the bulbs and the electric installation. I’ve had experience with some leds breaking after a couple of months, but then I decided to pay a little bit more and none of them failed in in the past 2 years.

In the end, your mileage may vary, but led bulbs can definitely last a long time.

…because for example my city replaced most old streetlights with LEDs, and installed plenty of new ones (in accordance with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox – how more efficient utilisation of a resource leads to _more_, not less, use of that resource …since previously non-affordable uses become viable, like when this paradox was described with steam engines and coal); even, like on so-called planty (a strip of vegetation and alley around the city centre in place of old fortifications), seemingly without readily replaceable ~bulb/module with LEDs.

In somewhat the same vein, I remember reading some complaints a while back from amateur astronomers about the problems LED streetlights cause for them. Namely, that “light pollution” from incandescent bulbs can easily be filtered out because it typically involves filtering out a single colour (typically yellow IIRC) – but that doesn’t work with LED streetlights, because they typically put out white light, which is basically impossible to filter (short of blocking ALL light, which would obviously defeat the purpose).